12-18-2025 1:23am

Saline Rotary, Mullick Challenge, Serve Gifts and More to Nearly 500 Kids

A longstanding Rotary Club of Saline initiative with deep community roots continues to expand, helping more families during the holiday season.

The Mullick Challenge served nearly 500 children this year. The Saline Rotary Club donated boxes of household items, ranging from hygiene products to cleaning supplies. It also provided a pack of diapers for each family that requested one. Rotary members staffed the shopping event at the Meijer store on Ann Arbor-Saline Road.

The Mullick Foundation funded the toy shopping and donated Butterball gift checks for each family to purchase a holiday meal. The foundation also partnered with the Children's Literacy Network, which donated two books per child.

Jill Durnen is club administrator for the Saline Rotary Club.

"The event at Meijer is so much fun. We've held it there since the beginning, when we had 100 kids, and now close to 500 kids participate," Durnen said.

The Meijer store provides the same cashier for the event each year and also donates to the Mullick Challenge.

"The management at Meijer has been so helpful," Durnen said.

Meijer even selected one of the participating families for its "Very Merry Meijer Surprise" program, awarding a $1,000 gift card.

"Each store in the country gets $1,000 to give away, and they chose one of our families for their store," Durnen said.

Dilip Mullick, owner of EWI Corp. and PSMI and a longtime Rotarian, launched the Mullick Challenge with the Saline Rotary Club in 2015. Today, Mullick's sons, Joey and Rick, run the companies. Rick helped staff the event Saturday with Saline Rotary members.

The Mullick Foundation established the challenge after the death of Jack Fagin, who had run a similar program with the Saline Rotary Club since about 2001. Fagin, a longtime Rotarian, owned Ann Arbor Clothing for 66 years. He started the Fagin Challenge with the Ann Arbor North Rotary Club before joining the Saline club and moving the event to Meijer.

"He challenged the club members to raise $2,000, which he would match, and we would spend the $4,000 at Meijer on 100 kids," Durnen said.

The spirit of giving still thrives with Rotary.